


a design for life

by Deputychairman



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Crowley definitely knows that, FYI the working title for this fic was, Friends With Benefits, M/M, as a wise person said on tumblr:, at least as far as Aziraphale is concerned, because I like to engage with the big moral questions at the same time, multitasking. you know., sex is basically sushi with friction, siri why does god allow suffering, so why WOULDN'T they have been doing it for several millennia?, sometimes accepting your feelings ALSO means making a moral committment to the world around you!, you can still pine for someone while already having sex with them you know!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 19:44:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20452553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/pseuds/Deputychairman
Summary: They lay stickily, oilily, in a companionable sprawl across the wreck of the bed, and for the first time Crowley understood why the humans enjoyed sleep. He was about to go to sleep himself when Aziraphale sighed next to him, and sat up.His hair was flattened on one side and sticking up wildly on the other. There was a small mark like a bruise on his neck that hadn’t been there before. He couldn’t imagine where it had come from, seeing as there had been none of the violence that their respective Head Offices might have expected from an angel and a demon coming into such close contact. Quite the contrary: all he had done to Aziraphale’s neck had been kiss it, at length.“Thank you, that was very nice,” Aziraphale said, looking at a spot next to him rather than actually at him. There was a certain prim quality to his voice that wasn’t at all promising.





	1. A messy human business

After She’d done her first six days of work and decided that it was all Good, the Almighty wasn’t given much to editorialising. Judgements came in the form of smitings and plagues and floods, but there wasn’t a lot of commentary to guide you through the nuances of Her thinking. Perhaps the Almighty wasn’t given to nuance in the first place.

Angels, both original flavour and fallen, had been built along the same adamantine lines. They had no doubts about what they were doing, and they did it without much second-guessing, asking pointless questions or nitpicking over the morality of anything. An unkind reviewer might have called them a little lacking in empathy. Even the fallen angels - it wasn’t that the company was any better in Hell.

Humans, on the other hand, She seemed to have made to different specifications. There was the free will, for a start. They could do whatever they liked, but they couldn’t seem to make their minds up about anything or reach any kind of consensus. As soon as one group started to do something, another would come along and say it was wrong and try to convince them to stop. Sometimes the convincing involved unspeakable violence. Sometimes what the first lot had been doing in the first place involved unspeakable violence.

Supernatural beings found it very hard to keep up, and to be honest didn’t always try all that hard. They popped Up or Down for a century or two, and when they came back to earth everything had changed and people were arguing about something completely new and murdering each other over something that hadn’t existed last time you looked. It was exhausting, quite honestly, and although they had plenty of power at their disposal, company policy was distinctly laissez-faire. If the Almighty hadn’t issued any new instructions, it was hardly their place to intervene. Free will, and all that.

Their permanent representatives on earth, on the other hand, were widely rumoured to be taking the whole thing too seriously by half. Maybe it was inhabiting a human body that did it. Something in the blueprint, or something about earth. Once you got your hands dirty down there, you got everything out of proportion.

* * *

When the earth had been around for 4000 years or so, some of the humans nailed another human to some wood on a hill outside Jerusalem and it caused no end of trouble.

For a start he took three days to die, and the permanent representatives of Heaven and Hell had to be there just in case.

They had already met a couple of times, but neither had mentioned this to their respective Head Offices. The demon Crowley, for instance, actually found he didn’t mind his counterpart on earth and he didn’t like angels as a rule. But when he spotted the angel Aziraphale in the crowd, he thought he might as well go over and say hello. Anything to take his mind off the agonising spectacle in front of them.

He did like sneaking up on people who hadn’t seen him coming and making them jump, but this wasn’t the time for it. This was more of a sombre nod and small-talk occasion, and despite being a demon Crowley _did_ know how to behave.

“Is it always like this? I’ve never seen anybody die up close before,” he murmured to the angel. He couldn’t help thinking that if he’d been better at temptations, the carpenter might have been at home right now, building a table or a door or whatever it was that carpenters did.

Aziraphale’s mouth twisted just like it had in the flood and when he’d said _I gave it away._ Crowley was starting to recognise that expression. After Mesopotamia, he hadn’t bumped into Aziraphale for a thousand years, give or take. A thousand years isn’t very long when you measure it against eternity, and he’d thought a lot about the unhappy twist of the angel’s mouth as the rain began to fall.

“It is rather awful, isn’t it? He’s got resurrection and eternal life to look forward to, but I don’t think that’s much consolation just at the moment.”

“Doesn’t look like it, no.”

A small group of humans had settled in for the duration, bearing witness, and it seemed wrong to leave before the end so Crowley stayed. Aziraphale stayed too. Crowley didn’t ask if he was there in a private or an official capacity; certainly there weren’t any other servants of heaven to be seen. Dying was a messy, human business and they probably didn’t have the stomach for it.

The other humans took turns to lie on the ground and slept, fitfully, when it was dark, so Crowley and Aziraphale did the same so as not to stand out. It was strange, lying on the stony ground next to an angel. They didn’t talk much.

Later Aziraphale cast a discreet blessing over the little group keeping vigil so they wouldn’t feel thirst or hunger and their bones wouldn’t ache on the hard ground, and that was when Crowley started to suspect he wasn’t there to represent Heaven at all. Heaven would have done something much flashier: appear as a flaming column of eyes, or make the desert bloom orchids, as if _that _was any help to anybody. Heaven had terrible taste, sometimes.

It only seemed right to use a little of his own power to keep the mosquitoes away, too. Hopefully Aziraphale didn’t notice: Crowley had a reputation to maintain, after all.

When it was finally over they turned back to Jerusalem, leaving the humans to weep and comfort each other as best they could.

“Gabriel’s due back for the next bit,” Aziraphale told him. “I’d rather not run into him, if it’s all the same to you. I just don’t feel up to it.”

That sounded like he was assuming they’d walk back into the city together, and as Crowley wasn’t any fonder of Gabriel than Aziraphale seemed to be, he fell into step beside him without questioning exactly where they were going. He personally didn’t have anywhere to be right now – he was certainly in no rush to report in to Hell about the failed temptations. (Cupboards. That was another thing carpenters made, wasn’t it? He could have been making a nice cupboard.)

So he sort of followed Aziraphale as night fell, and it was only when they found themselves within the city walls on a street faced with two turnings that he asked, “Where are we going, then?”

“I don’t know, I suppose I was following you. Do you have somewhere to stay?”

“No, it was all a bit last minute, this. He was supposed to succumb to temptation. I didn’t pack for an execution.”

“Oh. I suppose not.”

“Funny that if evil had triumphed, he’d still be alive, isn’t it?”

He didn’t really mean ‘funny’ at all.

“God moves in mysterious ways,” said Aziraphale weakly. It was obvious his heart wasn’t in it.

“Come on then, where are you staying?” Crowley asked, taking his arm. A human gesture seemed called for and Aziraphale didn’t shake him off or object or even notice there was anything unusual about an angel wandering the streets of Jerusalem arm in arm with a demon. “I’ll walk you back.”

Jerusalem was shutting up for the night, much quieter than usual. All the humans seemed to know what had happened and it hung over the dark streets like smoke. Crowley walked him all the way up to his door and inside it, to a suite of white-walled, high-ceilinged rooms and once he was there he still didn’t know what to do with himself. The two of them stood on a balcony overlooking the rooftops until Crowley conjured an amphora full of wine and then a second one once they’d drunk that.

“I feel awful, Crowley,” Aziraphale said eventually, with the air of someone making a deep dark confession. “This is exactly how it was supposed to happen, so why do I feel so awful about it?”

Crowley knew exactly how he felt.

“If I’d managed to tempt him, maybe it wouldn’t have happened,” he admitted in turn.

“Oh no, you mustn’t blame yourself! It’s the Almighty’s plan – if anybody’s responsible, it’s my side. Well. And the humans. They did hammer the nails in.”

Crowley shrugged. “I suppose. Nobody’s got clean hands.”

“I know he’s got a resurrection to look forward to, but it was still a horrible business. I don’t know how the humans live with it, doing this sort of thing to each other all the time. Death in general, really.”

“They make new life, I suppose.”

“They can’t each make a new life every time they witness a death, though, can they? There were 30 people there today.”

Crowley shrugged again, oddly self-conscious to be discussing this with an angel. It was one of the things he’d failed to tempt the carpenter with and he didn’t want notes on his performance, thank you very much.

“Well, you know. Sex and death. They reach out to each other, physically. Apparently it feels good, even if it isn’t going to make life every time.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “Yes, they do, don’t they?”

He sounded strange, and Crowley turned from watching the streets of Jerusalem to look at him. He was frowning, as if he was trying to work out a very complicated sum in his head and getting a different answer every time, but looking at Crowley while he did it as if it was his fault that the numbers weren’t doing what he wanted.

They both looked at each other in confusion, and their numbers fell into place at exactly the same time.

Crowley absolutely didn’t remember deciding to move. Creation had decided it for him, he concluded later (it had done nothing of the kind and he knew it), rearranging itself so that between one breath and the next he had an armful of angel and Aziraphale was kissing him. Or he was kissing Aziraphale. Perhaps, more accurately, they were kissing each other.

“Perhaps we should go inside,” Aziraphale managed after a very long time. His arms were still around Crowley so it didn’t seem like ‘inside’ meant ‘stop’. He wondered, very briefly, if he ought to be the one to suggest stopping. He didn’t.

Crowley let himself be steered off the balcony, into the bedroom and right into the bed that Aziraphale had surely never slept in – angels didn’t sleep, did they? But after 4000 years on earth, Crowley had a fairly good idea what human bodies did in beds together, and it wasn’t just sleeping. It was still a surprise to realise that his own body was interested in participating: somewhere along the way, he must have made an effort without consciously deciding to do it. Just like he hadn’t consciously decided to kiss Aziraphale in the first place.

But here they were, robes discarded along the way, the physical forms of an angel and a demon intertwined in a bed in the Holy City. Definitely one for the theologians, thought Crowley as Aziraphale pushed him gently down.

“You done this before?” he panted, with the angel on top of him.

“No, but it – seems fairly instinctive, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” agreed Crowley, following those instincts and running his hands across the lovely expanse of skin of Aziraphale’s back. His weight on top of him was surprisingly compelling, like an end in itself and an incitement to more both at the same time. More of what, he couldn’t rightly say just yet but he was very interested in finding out.

“I had no idea it was so - ” Aziraphale’s thumb moved across Crowley’s nipple in an interesting way, and he stopped talking to listen as Crowley gave a breathy sort of moan. He did the thing with his thumb again, and Crowley heard himself give the breathy sort of moan again, which was a surprise. The whole thing was quite the voyage of discovery.

Aziraphale kissed him then so he couldn’t exactly moan any more, but eventually he broke off and looked down at Crowley, slightly wild-eyed. “I didn’t know you’d make _noises._”

“Sorry, I can – stop, if you prefer - ” he wasn’t at all sure that he could stop, in fact, but it seemed the right thing to say to make sure that Aziraphale didn’t stop.

“Oh no, don’t! I like the noises, it’s useful to have feedback. We are quite new to this, so I think we ought to just go along with whatever seems to come pre-programmed into these bodies, don’t you?”

What seemed to come pre-programmed was Aziraphale’s hand wrapping around his cock, so Crowley just let out a strangled, “Alright then!” and let him get on with it.

It all got a lot faster after that. Aziraphale stopped stopping to ask him things, and Crowley certainly didn’t interrupt proceedings. Their human bodies seemed to know what they were doing, and what his was doing was carrying on with the moaning, and pulling Aziraphale closer, touching him anywhere he could reach, including some places that made Aziraphale make quite interesting noises too.

Once Aziraphale was making noises time went a bit funny, and the next thing he knew he was letting the angel roll him gently over onto his stomach and push his legs apart.

“Humans use oil for this part,” Crowley told the pillows, or Aziraphale, or maybe himself.

“Yes I know, do you want me to - ” Aziraphale was holding out a flask of oil where he could see it. “Or will you…?”

“If we’re doing it how the humans do it, makes more sense if you do.”

There was some fumbling, which felt extraordinarily good if very oily (it wasn’t Crowley’s bed so it wasn’t his problem if there was oil on the sheets) but eventually Aziraphale admitted defeat.

“I’m not sure I’m doing this right – perhaps you’d better just imagine it’ll all go smoothly.”

To be perfectly honest Crowley had some gaps in his knowledge about the finer details of this too, but between the oil that was already there and his optimism that since everything so far had felt amazing, this would too, they managed.

Crowley experienced his first human orgasm with Aziraphale deep inside him, the angel’s weight pressing him down, which was both extremely pleasurable, physically, as well as theologically appropriate, he felt - demon below and angel above. It took him a few minutes to reach that conclusion, as an unexpected side effect of the physical pleasure was to knock all his abstract thought functions off line for a good 15 minutes. It seemed to be part of the blueprint, like the way he suddenly felt so extremely fond of somebody who was supposed to be his hereditary enemy. It would pass, he expected.

They lay stickily, oilily, in a companionable sprawl across the wreck of the bed, and for the first time Crowley understood why the humans enjoyed sleep. He was about to go to sleep himself when Aziraphale sighed next to him, and sat up.

His hair was flattened on one side and sticking up wildly on the other. There was a small mark like a bruise on his neck that hadn’t been there before. He couldn’t imagine where it had come from, seeing as there had been none of the violence that their respective Head Offices might have expected from an angel and a demon coming into such close contact. Quite the contrary: all he had done to Aziraphale’s neck had been kiss it, at length.

“Thank you, that was very nice,” Aziraphale said, looking at a spot next to him rather than actually at him. There was a certain prim quality to his voice that wasn’t at all promising.

“Y’welcome?”

“But you mustn’t let me keep you – I’m sure you have your hands full with temptations here in the Holy City!”

Aziraphale was on his feet now, naked and tousled for an instant that made his heart clench uselessly, inexplicably, and then dressed and combed in the blink of an eye as if nothing had ever happened. Not three days and nights watching a man die and wondering if they could have done something, not the walk back to the city, not the wine, not the _reaching out_ to each other.

Crowley had been going to remove the oil stain and the wet patch from the sheets for him, but he didn’t. Instead he got up, got dressed, and called a nonchalant, “See you around, angel,” over his shoulder as he left.

Humans had already invented the concept of virginity, and as he aimlessly wandered the streets of Jerusalem Crowley decided that if anybody from Head Office found out, that was the angle he’d be best off playing. I took an angel’s virginity, he’d say. With my wiles. They’d buy that for sure.

(They hadn’t seen him, face down in Aziraphale’s bed, giving it all up as the angel took him apart. If he understood the commodification of virginity correctly, as something one person took from another, then he had the distinct feeling it would be Aziraphale who had taken his and not the other way around. Even if technically, it was the other way around too. But Hell wouldn’t have the slightest idea what any of that meant, so he was free to tell it however sounded best. Worst. Whatever. Hopefully, of course, he’d never have to tell it at all. But that didn’t stop him going over and over it in his head, just to make sure he had his story straight.)


	2. Credit where credit’s due

Crowley had a performance review in the year 1550. They made him fill in a form so he jotted down a lot of unpleasantness he’d heard about in taverns and it seemed that nobody in Hell actually checked the paperwork because he passed with flying colours and a commendation for something called La Santa Inquisicion that he hadn’t even heard of. 

He’d had his doubts about the church right from the start, since the thing with the carpenter. How could you trust any group that put such an emphasis on the afterlife at the expense of the life right in front of them, and who fetishized a gruesome means of execution? And then the Other Side got in there with the holy water and the consecrated ground. He’d never liked Rome, either, and so of course they had to pick bloody Rome as their headquarters. 

The place had always been too pleased with itself, all tacky gold fittings, pomp and circumstance, insisting it was the centre of the civilised world and everybody else ought to cut their hair like Romans and learn Latin. (He had cut his hair like a Roman, and didn’t suit him.) He’d never been a fan of all the slavery either. Too much like Heaven – you’ve got to do what I tell you because I’m in charge and you’re not, and if you ask too many questions I’ll do horrible things to you. It all touched a bit of a nerve.

He’d run into Aziraphale there once, not long after that night in Jerusalem. He hadn’t been in the mood to associate with any angels, that was for sure, but then he hadn’t expected any angels to ask him out to lunch. He’d never actually had lunch before, let alone the oysters Aziraphle insisted they try, and there was something disarmingly enthusiastic about the way he grasped at worldly pleasures, about his joy in sharing, that made Crowley want to be the one he shared with.

So, lunch it had been, in a very nice restaurant where anybody from their respective Head Offices could have seen them if they’d been looking only luckily they weren’t. It was – nice, even if Crowley wasn’t. Aziraphale smiled at him and they both enjoyed the oysters and ordered a lot of wine, and it seemed sort of inevitable that he’d follow the angel back to his lodgings and let him –

If anybody was asking,_ let him_ would have to be filed next to _taking his virginity_ in terms of accuracy. It wasn’t technically untrue, but implied that he, Crowley, had been reluctant, had barely tolerated it - in order to tempt Aziraphale? That would work. It would be almost impossible for Hell to prove otherwise, and that was what counted.

The truth was that Crowley had found himself almost begging before the angel had even touched him, offering everything he was, blindly desperate for it in a way that terrified him. Aziraphale had clearly been practicing – there was none of the fumbling or uncertainty of Jerusalem, and he had several new suggestions that left Crowley breathless and trembling on his hands and knees, speechless with pleasure, and then a blissed-out wreck bent over the back of a sturdy couch.

Aziraphale kicked him out so fast afterwards it made his head spin. It was all very polite of course, but a demon recognises a casting out when it happens to him.

When they gave him the commendation, he went over to Spain to see what all the fuss was about and immediately wished he hadn’t. Knowing what the church was like, he hadn’t had high hopes for what he was about to find, but even an experienced demon like Crowley was occasionally surprised by humans, and not in a good way. Demons could be mean, petty, and sadistic but they were absolute amateurs compared to what he found in Spain. 

With mounting horror he took in a public execution by burning in Toledo, an act of torture that actually made him close his eyes and turn away queasily in Antequera, and sermon from a Dominican of such breathtaking hypocrisy and cruelty that he cast his first freelance curse at the man. The guy wasn’t as hands-on as the people doing the burning alive or the horrible thing with the fingernails, but he was the one who ordered it in God’s name and somehow that was worse, Crowley felt.

So he started drinking, and carried on drinking until he forgot why.

Aziraphale found him, blind drunk in an alley in a village that was not yet called Torremolinos, or if it was Crowley didn’t meet anybody who could tell him that. 500 years later, humans would emulate him in travelling from England to the south of Spain, having a quick look around then getting as drunk as they could as fast as they could. Most did not have the good fortune of being picked out of the gutter by an actual angel. 

The wine was making it difficult to understand exactly _how_ the angel had tracked him down. Yes, they had both somehow found themselves living in damp, grey, England (he was never clear how that had happened, if it was really as accidental they told each other it was. But some things it was best not to interrogate too closely; one of the perks about being a demon, Crowley had always thought, was that you didn’t have to face any hard personal truths if you didn’t want to. You didn’t have to do anything to improve, morally, ever! It was great.)

It was such a small island that they did keep bumping into each other. Their professional Arrangement had been Crowley’s idea, and through sheer exposure to his arguments the angel came around in the end. Perhaps the horrors of travelling across the country in the rain were more persuasive than he was, but it gave Crowley useful input when the local humans came to fine-tune their public transport infrastructure in the 20th century.

“Crowley? Is that you?”

“No,” Crowley lied, firmly if a little slurred. He had seen the Inquisition he was credited with inventing and if he was sure of anything it was that he didn’t want to be the person Hell thought had come up with this.

Aziraphale made it light and then tutted and turned the light off again. “I knew it was you. Where have you been? Why are you lying on the ground? It’s _very_ dirty.”

“Dunno. M’drunk. Can’t remember.”

“You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself very much, if you don’t mind my saying. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather come down to the beach and sober up? Perhaps there’s something I can do to help?”

“Who said I needed help?”

“Nobody _said _that, but you are lying face down in an alley that smells of fish and it just doesn’t seem like you. Here, let me get you up -”

And with that he began manhandling Crowley to his feet. He did it the human way in case anybody was watching, and if he hadn’t been so drunk Crowley might have been impressed, or curious where he’d learned how to do it. He wasn’t really cooperating, but before he knew it he was more or less upright, a wall at his back and the angel’s hands on his chest to hold him up. And then Aziraphale was manoeuvring them off from the wall and down the alley, half-dragging Crowley with him as if he knew exactly where they were going.

He'd never touched Aziraphale like this, shoulders solid under his arm to hold him up, one arm tight round his waist where he slumped, a not-dead weight. Dead was what the humans were making all those other humans into, in horrible and inventive ways. Crowley was merely drunk – or not _merely_ drunk. He was spectacularly, demonically drunk, drunker than anybody had ever been in the history of the world, ever, and he wasn’t going to die of it because demons couldn’t die, _he_ was alright, wasn’t he? The Almighty had kicked him out but he wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be because here was one of Her angels, holding him up and stumbling in the sand, smelling like firmament and summer grass and insisting through gritted teeth:

“Do sober up, Crowley.”

“No. Don’t wanna and you can’t make me.”

Aziraphale sighed dramatically.

“I probably could make you, but I’m not going to. But you know you have to do it eventually.”

“Don’t.”

“Yes, you do. You have to sober up right now, Crowley, or I’ll – I’ll drop you and you’ll be too drunk to break your fall. You’ll probably get sand in your mouth and down the back of your neck and you’ll be too drunk to get it out again - ”

This was almost certainly true, but Aziraphale didn’t drop him. The sea and the dark sky and the beach spun most unpleasantly when Crowley tried (not very hard) to focus, and Aziraphale continued to not drop him.

They compromised by sitting down. Possibly collapsing. Crowley was too drunk to care what the difference was, but he found himself 70% horizontal on the beach and approximately 50% of his physical form was still being held up by an undetermined percentage of Aziraphale’s physical form, and that did not meet the definition of ‘dropped’. He was sure of that, even if he wasn’t sure the percentages added up to what they ought to or if they even ought to add up in the first place. He hadn’t invented mathematics, but he had wondered if he should claim it as one of his anyway.

“Crowley, please sober up. Tell me what happened.”

“Don’t want to. Gimme another drink.”

“I shan’t. I’m going to sit here until you sober up.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll do it for you.”

“Don’t you dare! What about fwee will. Free rill. Free will!”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes so hard it made Crowley dizzy and he almost fell over even though he was already sitting down.

“As I’m sure you know perfectly well, free will is for the humans.”

“Yeah, we’ve got to obey the _divine commands_,” he meant to pour thousands of years of scorn into those words, but they came out in a wine-based slur. “But I didn’t, did I? S’why I’m a demon.”

“Well I’m not, and if we sit here too long somebody from Up There might notice and then I’d be in for it, wouldn’t I? I’m supposed to thwart you, not hold your hair back while you’re sick.”

Crowley didn’t remember being sick before, but as soon as Aziraphale said it he realised it was an excellent idea. He managed to lurch to his feet and take a few steps closer to the water before he fell to his knees and threw up. Aziraphale was as good as his word. One hand was cool on Crowley’s face, holding his hair out of the way, the other a reassuring weight on his back, and when he’d finished Aziraphale let go and held out a flask of the freshest, purest water he had ever tasted.

“You win, angel,” he groaned, wiping his mouth. “I’ll sober up.”

Nothing had really changed since he started drinking on Monday, but misery does love company and the world seemed just about bearable again now that he had some.

Aziraphale guided him further down the beach, away from the faint lights from the fishing shacks, and they sat side by side, leaning against a small boat turned upside down on the sand. The waves broke in front of them as a light wind blew in from the sea. There was sand in his shoes and he rather felt that he deserved it.

“I don’t mean to push,” Aziraphale said eventually. “But has anything happened?_ Is_ there anything I can do to help?”

Bloody angel, with his gentle concern. Crowley could withstand the disgust of any other celestial being, but not Aziraphale’s. Not with their shoulders touching and the taste of the water Aziraphale called into being just for him still on his lips.

Get it over with. One clean blow and it’d be done.

“Got a commendation,” Crowley said. “The Inquisition. Got the credit for everything they’re, everything they’re – doing to each other. Because that’s who I am, isn’t it?”

“I – I don’t know. Is it?”

Crowley shrugged. “I’m a demon, Aziraphale.”

“Yes, but there are demons and demons.”

“Have you seen? What’s happening?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m here.”

“There you go then. They gave me the commendation for it and I didn’t know anything about it, so I had to come and see for myself. And now I’ve seen.”

“Oh. Oh, I am sorry, Crowley.”

Crowley turned to him, almost angry – how dare he be sorry, how dare he pity him –

But Aziraphale’s sorrow looked so real, so painful, that there was nothing for his anger to hold onto and it slid away as fast as it had come.

“Why does She allow it? In Her name? I’m getting the credit for it and I can’t stand it, so how does She?”

“I don’t know, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. He was biting his lip, that twist to his face Crowley remembered from the Garden, from the flood, from Golgotha. “I’m not supposed to question the policy decisions, but – I don’t know. She doesn’t seem to get involved at the moment. I don’t have an answer for you.”

The waves carried on breaking on the beach in front of them, pebbles dancing in the low surf.

Aziraphale turned to him, his knee digging into Crowley’s leg.

“Shall we go back to London and get drunk there?” he asked. “Both of us?”

“Oh Satan, yes please,” said Crowley.

In the end he got two whole days in the finest taverns of Southwark with Aziraphale before the angel stiffened and sobered up so fast it was like he’d never been drunk in the first place.

“I have to go,” he sighed. “Duty calls. You will take care of yourself, won’t you?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine, s’all fine, nothing to worry about here,” Crowley lied.

Aziraphale glanced guiltily behind him and nodded like he didn’t entirely believe him. But that was _his_ problem: if he was so worried, he could always stay, couldn’t he?

He couldn’t, though. Crowley knew that really.


	3. Appropriate precautions

The holy water had been in Crowley’s safe for less than a day when Aziraphale manifested into his living room without a word of warning in the middle of the afternoon. Which was uncharacteristic, to say the least.

Aziraphale had never been to his flat before, and before yesterday he’d always been scrupulous in standing on ceremony: now that they had an Arrangement meetings were nearly always planned in advance, in public places. The only exception was probably that time when Crowley had stopped him getting discorporated by Nazis during the war and driven him home afterwards.

Aziraphale had invited him in, then, given him tea and brandy (“We’ve survived an air raid, Crowley, we must have some tea. And a brandy. It’s what the humans do.”) He’d been oddly shaken, as if they really had been in danger, glancing at his bag of books as if it too might explode. Crowley had been expecting a quick tumble on the back-room sofa by way of a thank you, but the angel hadn’t laid a finger on him and Crowley hadn’t known how to ask without it sounding like he expected payment for services rendered.

And there had been the Bastille, too, now that he thought about it. Not much ceremony there.

“Isn’t this worse than what She drowned everybody for, that time in Mesopotamia?” Crowley had asked him over lunch afterwards. You could still get outstanding crepes, even in the middle of a revolution – France hadn’t changed that much.

Aziraphale had just looked unhappy and didn’t say anything. Crowley knew perfectly well he didn’t have any answers so there wasn’t much to be gained from bullying him over it. “Alright, alright – they don’t consult you on the policy decisions.”

“Well they don’t, you know. But I thought I might stay on for a few days, do a few consolations for the victims, get a couple of ringleaders to repent, that sort of thing.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, nothing official. No frivolous miracles, of course - I’ll keep these clothes, just while I’m here.”

“Will you indeed.”

Aziraphale looked at him with a frankness that took him by surprise.

“I don’t mind taking them off for a little while, if that’s what you mean,” he said, in exactly the same tone of voice he used to suggest lunch. Heaven probably didn’t differentiate much between various types of fraternising, after all.

He was gone when Crowley woke up from his post-sex nap, which hurt a little. But these were Aziraphale’s rooms, so he supposed it spoke of a certain degree of trust.

And now here he was, without so much as a by-your-leave. Crowley was still in his pyjamas and he didn’t have his sunglasses, and he just blinked at the angel in surprise.

“I’m sorry to barge in like this, Crowley, but I had to bring you this,” he said. “In case you need to handle it. The – the holy water, I mean.”

He opened the bag he was clutching (the same one that had contained those books? It might have been. Aziraphale kept things) and produced a rubber apron, elbow-length rubber gloves. Safety goggles. A face mask worthy of a nuclear power station.

“Don’t worry about the thermos losing integrity over time, I’ve seen to that, but if something happened to me the miracle might not hold so then you’d need to check it every hundred years or so - ”

Crowley still hadn’t said anything. Aziraphale’s face was tight with worry and he ought to have lightened the mood with social niceties, said, “kinky!” when the rubber gloves came out, _something_.

“But if the worst happens and you need to use it, you’ll keep yourself safe with this, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Crowley managed. “It’ll be fine, you don’t have to worry. Look, I’ve locked it in the safe.”

He got up and Aziraphale trailed after him into the study, to where his safe did indeed contain the holy water. He even opened it with a dramatic flourish, as if Aziraphale had asked for proof.

“See?”

Aziraphale barely glanced at it. He could have had a herd of wildebeest in that safe and Aziraphale would still have nodded absently, trusting him. More fool him, taking a demon at his word, thought Crowley automatically, overlooking for a moment the fact that he was actually telling the truth. He’d never got into the habit of lying to Aziraphale and it was hardly worth the effort to start now.

Not with the angel standing there like he couldn’t decide whether to bolt or fling himself into Crowley’s arms. Crowley knew which one he wanted, and he also knew which one was more likely to happen. Knew which one was a better idea too, but just because he was telling the truth didn’t mean he had to start approving of sensible decisions as well. He had a reputation to maintain.

“I’m pretty sure I have done the wrong thing this time, you know,” Aziraphale said quietly. Sometimes he said things just to get Crowley to disagree with him and change his mind, but this sounded more like he meant it.

“No you haven’t. You can’t, I told you.”

Aziraphale smiled, a sad blink-and-you’ve-missed-it thing. Crowley took a step towards him.

“The only harm holy water can possibly do is to demons – we’re always fighting among ourselves, demons. All you’ve really done is use me to thwart other demons! It’s brilliant, angel. They’ll give you a commendation or something.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Crowley knew perfectly well that wasn’t what he meant. He could see from the way Aziraphale was looking at him, from the way he was standing all the way over there, bag of heavy-duty waterproof clothing at his feet and his hands clasped in front of him. He could also see just as clearly that Aziraphale wasn’t going to say it, and he didn’t want him to say it either, not even to tell him he was wrong. He meant, _you’re in danger because of me. You only need holy water because of me_, _and the Arrangement, and I’m not sure I can handle the responsibility._

He took another step closer, made his voice as gentle as he could. “I know, angel.”

Aziraphale looked away.

Ok. Fine. Too fast. Back to what they knew, then.

“I’m not going to _say_ thank you, but I could always…” he was close enough to touch now but he didn’t.

Aziraphale stepped back, but his heart wasn’t in it. Crowley knew what it felt like to be kept at arm’s length and this wasn’t it. This was _I shouldn’t_ when somebody offered you another drink, not standing up and getting your coat. Aziraphale’s arm’s length was so effective it worked even as Crowley took another step to back him up against the shiny expanse of the desk. Must be something they were teaching in Heaven these days. Celestial detachment. This close and no closer. It worked as Crowley reached out to rub him through his trousers, felt him make an effort almost immediately.

It worked as Crowley dropped to his knees, pressing his lips against his erection through the fabric to wring a stifled gasp out of him. When he reached up to unfasten his fly, Aziraphale’s hands were there already, opening buttons and drawing himself out. Their fingers touched as they both guided his cock into Crowley’s open mouth. 

They’d been doing this a long time, but Crowley couldn’t remember ever having got on his knees for Aziraphale before. He knew why now.

It wasn’t really that either of them minded that it looked like a mockery of prayer, or the power dynamic it implied. It was because it was too easy to look up, see Aziraphale biting his lip as he watched him. To easy for Aziraphale to look down at him, see how much this meant to him. Neither of them needed that.

Crowley shut his eyes as he took the hot length of him right to the back of his throat and almost choked when he felt Aziraphale’s hand stroke through his hair, adjusting the angle and then just resting there, fingertips like electricity on his scalp. He made a little noise and Aziraphale did it again, holding him with a fistful of his hair and nowhere else, rocking into his mouth as Crowley took it all because it was all that was on offer. Thrusting harder and harder until there was no gentleness left, pulling Crowley’s hair as his control frayed, something wild and rough that lived deep underneath shining though.

The lights flickered when Aziraphale came, and he groaned with a sound like pain.

Crowley hadn’t meant to get involved this time, he hadn’t consciously made an effort, but his human form had developed an automatic response to physical contact with Aziraphale. The angel’s reaction might have been a little more intense than usual, but he could still ignore his own – was going to stand up, wipe his mouth with a grin and say, _there, we’re even. Don’t worry about it, angel. _

Before he could get to his feet Aziraphale had dropped to the floor like gravity was too much to withstand, bearing him backwards with a hand still in his hair both to pull and to cushion his fall so that he ended up stretched out on the rug with the angel on top of him.

“Crowley,” he was saying, kissing the taste of himself from Crowley’s mouth with deep, frantic kisses like he wanted to consume him and pushing his other hand into Crowley’s pyjama bottoms to wrap around his cock. Crowley rather embarrassed himself at that point.

He whimpered against Aziraphale’s mouth, thrust desperately into his fist and came so hard he saw stars.

When he came back to himself Aziraphale was still stroking his cock, wringing the last sparks of pleasure from him as he trembled helplessly, cast adrift with only the angel to cling to. Humans prayed for an angel to save them when they were lost, didn’t they? How ironic that a demon should actually have one. Whatever the Almighty was up to these days, She certainly had a bleak sense of humour.

Aziraphale held him stickily as he softened, his other arm a cushion under Crowley’s head and their legs entwined. Crowley shifted closer to kiss him, again and again, melting into him in boneless satisfaction. The floor was very hard but neither of them made any move to get up or separate. Crowley would have laid there all day and all night if Aziraphale wanted to.

But he didn’t want to. Of course he didn’t. Eventually he sighed and let go, rolling onto his back and Crowley had to do the decent thing lift his head so he could have his arm back too.

“Well,” Aziraphale said briskly, miracling them both clean and sitting up. “I’m sure it’ll all be fine if you take the appropriate precautions. It’s only dangerous if you actually touch it. The holy water, I mean.”

Crowley might not have been much of a reader of literature, but he knew a painfully apt metaphor when he heard one. The only part he wasn’t sure of was how Aziraphale was defining ‘touching’ these days – not literally, obviously. Literal touching was fine.

“Yeah. Got it. Appropriate precautions,” he repeated from the floor as Aziraphale got up and did up his trousers.

Always the gentleman, he held out a hand to help Crowley up but Crowley waved him off.

He was a demon, nobody said he had to have nice manners and see his guests to the door.


	4. A sea change

If you get up early enough, you can have an English beach to yourself, even in August. Of course this is easier for supernatural beings who don’t need to sleep and therefore don’t need to get up in the first place. Especially those who don’t need to go to work and can rent a very nice house close to the sea in East Sussex and be in it on a Tuesday when there’s hardly anybody else around.

(“This isn’t a cottage, angel. It’s a spacious, high-ceilinged family house,” Crowley had objected.

“_Please_ don’t put it like that. I would never have asked you to look through the listings if I’d known the vocabulary was so contagious.”

“Well-appointed, south-facing. Period features. Comprising a master bedroom with four poster bed - ”

(A very sturdy four-poster bed, which he knew because Aziraphale had obliging tied him to it and made love to him slowly, sweetly and tenderly until he was actually crying. He could have freed himself with a thought, but not doing it was exactly the point of the exercise.)

“_Stop_ that, Crowley. We don’t have to stay here if you don’t like it.”

“I didn’t say that. I just said it wasn’t a cottage. I like it a lot, actually.”

He had already been thinking about the four-poster bed, and what he was going to ask Aziraphale to do to him in it. What on earth would they want with a cottage, that would have low ceilings he’d bump his head on, and an ordinary, rickety sort of bed that would probably collapse if they tried anything creative?)

Crowley had sat up all night with Aziraphale to avoid the getting up early part, which he disliked intensely. Sleeping was great, he was a big fan of sleep, but it was a shame the Almighty hadn’t tried a bit harder with the transition back to being awake.

He’d slept for most of the 19th century after he and Aziraphale fell out and made it up again - make-up sex was a wonderful invention, but it did make you need a nap afterwards.

Alright, fine, yes, it had been a little passive-aggressive of him to stay asleep for so long, so maybe they hadn’t made up quite as completely as they’d both pretended at the time, but when you’re looking at eternity, a century-long nap isn’t such a big deal. He missed the worst of colonialism, which was a blessing. A cursing. For the best. Worst. Ugh. He wouldn’t have wanted to be awake through all that and know that for all his power, it was simply too many people for him to do anything significant about it. If that had even been his job, which it wasn’t. Obviously. Not then, anyway.

It began to get light at around 5am, and Crowley had made them coffee, a new skill of which he was very proud. Not that he said so.

“Here,” he muttered, holding out a cup to Aziraphale without even looking at him. You didn’t need to look at Aziraphale to know when he appreciated something: he sort of glowed with it. He’d said, “_Thank you_, my dear,” as if Crowley had handed him something infinitely precious.

By six it was properly light, the sky an Impressionist’s delight of white cloud and grey cloud on a canvas of celestial blue over the darker blue of the sea, and they trudged across the shingle down to the sea.

Crowley had done his research, and research suggested that a recreational swimmer in the summer months could perfectly well enjoy the English Channel in a normal bathing suit. (Whether ‘enjoy’ was the right word to use depended on the swimmer.) This year there had even been a heatwave, to bring the water temperature up a little. It had been followed by violent thunder storms, flooding, unexplained power cuts, a dam threatening to burst in the Peak District and a political crisis, as if the earth itself, or at least the English part of the earth, knew that Armageddon had almost gone ahead and was still shaking off the echoes.

Further research had indicated that other recreational swimmers indulged in the half wetsuit, a garment which protected the wearer from knee to elbow.

“Oh, but it’s almost exactly what I thought you’d wear!” Aziraphale said when Crowley showed him. He had gone to a shop to buy them and everything.

“What do you mean, _what you thought I’d wear_? Why have you been thinking about what I’d wear to swim in the Channel?”

“No, your trial and – and the holy water. It would have been terribly uncomfortable to get all your clothes wet but I didn’t want to show them your human body naked, so I had to guess. It would have been much less stressful if you just bought real physical clothes, you know. At least I would have known if you had anything on underneath, but as I didn’t I just imagined you in a bathing suit.”

“This is not a bathing suit, angel. It’s nothing like one. Bathing suits are like underwear – shorts, or bra and pants.”

“Oh, that would have been too revealing, I couldn’t have done that to you! I chose something like this, but without the sleeves. You looked very nice in it.”

(Crowley had subsequently made the small extra effort of incorporating underwear into his human wardrobe, for the pleasure of letting Aziraphale take it off him.)

“Are you sure want to do it completely the human way?” Aziraphale asked doubtfully, allowing the waves to reach his toes before retreating with a wince. It gave way to a different wince as his feet came down imprudently fast on the pebbles.

Crowley gave him a Look, which he ignored.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said firmly.

“I could just make it a little bit warmer where we’re going to swim, if you’d like? That wouldn’t materially change things, would it?”

“We said we were going to try a representative sample of human experiences. I’ve tried all of yours, and you’ve enjoyed all of mine so far,” Crowley reminded him, coming to stand beside him where the beach met the sea.

“I have, haven’t I?” Aziraphale smiled rather naughtily at him and almost wiggled with delight: Crowley’s last representative sample had been the one with the four-poster bed, and they both agreed it had been an outstanding human experience. Aziraphale had risen spectacularly to the occasion.

“Trust me on this, angel.”

“Of course I trust you, it’s just that the sea really is very cold, Crowley!”

As if to prove his point, an icy wave broke over Crowley’s feet and he leapt back in surprise, almost losing his balance as his weight came down on hard shingle. It was worse than consecrated ground. Aziraphale didn’t even say _I told you so_, which he would have been perfectly entitled to do and which Crowley might well have done in his place (demon). He just reached out to steady him and Crowley held on so he wouldn’t let go. Clutching each other, they glared at the English Channel.

“I’m not going to give this pathetic body of water the satisfaction,” Crowley hissed at it. “I’m going in, angel, with you or without you.”

Aziraphale sighed the sigh of the long-suffering martyr and took a firmer hold of Crowley’s arm.

“Alright, fine, I’m coming with you. But I’m going to complain the whole time.”

“Course you are. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Still clinging to each other, they waded in up to their knees and then up to their waists, and then –

It had seemed such a good idea in the milder waters of the Hampstead Heath mixed bathing pond, their favourite of the three, where an ordinary bathing suit was indeed perfectly sufficient. They would come away to the South Downs, take a few days to recover from the stresses of Armageddon, being fired and almost executed, and reconnect with everything they loved about the physical world. This had turned out to mean eating excellent fish and chips, drinking the local beer, and having a lot of sex, but they both knew there were bigger questions that remained unanswered.

“We are only delaying the inevitable with all this, Crowley,” Aziraphale had said.

“I know that, I told _you_ that,” Crowley replied.

He _had_ told Aziraphale that. In London he’d said, “Nobody can make important decisions about what to do with the rest of eternity while they’re stressed. Let’s go on holiday, try some human experiences we haven’t tried before, and delay the inevitable.”

“Are you stressed, my dear? You don’t seem stressed.”

This was a fair point. He had been lying in a boneless, post-coital sprawl in Aziraphale’s arms, half on top of him in a way that might have made breathing difficult had Aziraphale needed to breathe. His eyes were closed. To the casual observer, he looked quite relaxed.

“Not right this second, but as soon as I get up I will be.”

Aziraphale sighed, carried on stroking his back. “I want to say, don’t get up then, but that’s not really engaging with the question either, I suppose.”

“I’m not getting up yet, though.”

“Oh, good.”

Among other, arguably more important changes that averting Armageddon had brought about in Crowley’s life, had been Aziraphale’s new willingness to just lie there with him. No more breezy dismissals just when Crowley most wanted to hold on, no more studied casualness. At least one of Aziraphale’s doubts had apparently been resolved along the way: he might not know how to give meaningful shape to their eternal lives now they were both unemployed, so to speak, but it seemed he was sure about Crowley. A less secure demon might have held it against him, that he’d needed 6000 years and the coming of the Antichrist (great kid, great force for chaos in the world. Crowley planned to keep in touch) to make up his mind, but not Crowley. He couldn’t blame the angel for being cautious, for wanting to believe the best of Heaven for as long as he could. Crowley was suspicious enough for both of them. Whither the balance of good and evil in the world if they _both _immediately thought the worst of everybody they knew?

There would probably be other changes, things they might not notice for years to come – things that might not happen for years to come – but for now Crowley was content to take it a day at a time. Take Aziraphale out to lunch, draw up a list of intensely earthly experiences they hadn’t tried before, doze off for a bit and wake to find Aziraphale no further away than the next room and sometimes significantly closer.

As it turned out, all the wild swimming blogs Crowley had been reading were telling the truth and there was something transformative about immersing oneself in the bracing sea water of the English Channel.

Moses parting the Red Sea it was not - Aziraphale had been there so he should know. It was quite a sight, he’d said. They _could_ have parted the English Channel, but that was not the point of the exercise: there was a very convenient London-Paris train service if they had wanted to get to the other side.

Crowley wanted to do this to connect the human form he inhabited with the physical world it was part of, to take his feet off the ground and feel himself small and insignificant and _here_. Float on his back and hear the stones moving beneath the waves as his human body was moved by them too, taste salt on his lips. There was freedom in it that sparked a joy in him that he had never known before. He couldn’t find any words for such a serious, wild feeling, but Aziraphale didn’t say anything either. Perhaps he felt it too. He looked quite different here: hair flattened with the water and his eyes very blue one moment, very dark another as if they were reflecting both the shallows and the depths.

Getting out again was not quite as transcendental.

“Ow. Ow. Ow. Bloody. Stones! I’ll teach you to – ow – hurt my feet - ”

“Ow!” echoed Aziraphale, following him unsteadily out of the water and back up the beach to their shoes.

“Turn you to sand, just you wait and see - ”

He would have made good on his threat if it hadn’t been for a woman walking a dog calling out a cheery “Good morning! Lovely day for it!”

He’d been tempted to just snap his fingers and make himself dry and back in the clothes he usually wore, but Aziraphale was having none of it.

“This was your idea, now we’ve come this far we’ve got to do it properly, Crowley! Back home for a hot shower – it’s all part of the experience, you said.”

Crowley cursed his past self for having said anything so stupid and considered denying it. But Aziraphale was already crunching purposefully up the beach in the direction of their house-not-a-cottage, so he settled for cursing just a small sample of the shingle underfoot and followed him. It would be self-sabotage to miss the glimpse of Aziraphale in a hot shower. Being a _well-appointed family home_, the place boasted (the holiday letting agency had indeed used the word ‘boasted’) something called a monsoon shower where torrential quantities of water fell in a space so huge that a person going in there alone felt positively lonely. Agoraphobic, almost. The only possible solution was to help the angel wriggle out of the half wetsuit and follow him in there.

Apparently Aziraphale was really committing to doing things the human way today. He used shampoo, and wrapped himself in a towel afterwards, and he had even got halfway dressed before Crowley noticed and thought to stop him.

Happily, it was ridiculously easy to talk Aziraphale out of his clothes and into bed these days.

“Why don’t you take off your clothes and come to bed,” Crowley suggested. “To have sex, I mean.”

“Oh, what a good idea!” replied Aziraphale, with a smile that actually _glowed_. As if he was only waiting for Crowley to ask.

It occurred to Crowley that he hadn’t asked much, before. That he had always let Aziraphale be the one to ask him (and this, finally, was something where he could honestly say he had ‘let him’). Oh, he been the one to push the professional convenience of the Arrangement, made sure he was in the right place at the right time when Aziraphale needed him but wouldn’t ask in turn, but in this, specifically, he had held back. To risk being rejected where it was only him, Crowley, nothing but who he was that was on the line – impossible.

That seemed to have changed now.

He walked the angel backwards towards the bed, slowly, not kissing him yet in spite of the terrible temptation of his face tipped back expectantly. Crowley gave him a little push back onto the mattress instead.

“Oh!” he exclaimed in undeniable delight, that luminous smile back as he landed among the pillows.

Crowley followed him down, straddled him. Then he leaned over him, arms braced either side of his head and still didn’t kiss him. He got nice and close, but didn’t close the gap. Aziraphale’s smile was bright with curiosity, trusting him completely and waiting to see what he would do next. His warm hands rested on Crowley’s thighs, and there wasn’t any rush, was there? This moment of knowing he could lean in whenever he wanted and that Aziraphale would kiss him back, eagerly and without reservation. He could draw it out for days, if he wanted to. For years. That was what eternity meant.

He didn’t, of course. He wasn’t supposed to resist temptation and Aziraphale didn’t like to: he reached up to pull Crowley down to kiss him and Crowley went, sending his clothes away so that they both gasped at the sudden touch of skin to skin. Both of them warm from the shower with the memory of the cold water behind it, and all the years they’d been touching each other to guide them. Only now neither of them had to hold anything back, or pull away to protect each other. Not that Crowley had been much good at that anyway, but it was a relief not to have to try. To know he didn’t have to control his face, that Aziraphale wouldn’t have to pretend he didn’t know.

He could kiss as desperately as he wanted, which apparently was very desperately indeed.

“Let’s do it like this, you inside me this time,” Azirapahale said. “I’d like to look up at you while I come on your cock.”

It was amazing how Crowley could be the one on top and yet Aziraphale could still take him apart with one suggestion in a conversational tone. He was a little flushed but otherwise perfectly composed and it _did things_ to Crowley.

“Ngk,” Crowley said. “I mean yeah, great, ok.” It came out in a rushed sort of squawk that didn’t fit at all with the cool, sexy image he tried to project. Well. Probably too late to worry about that now.

Now it was more urgent to do what Aziraphale wanted, to reach for the oil (after that first clumsy attempt they had got much better at it, and through trial and error concluded that sex in human form was even better when you fully embraced the humanity of it and didn’t cut corners. No altering reality with supernatural powers, just giving yourself over to hands and oil. There were modern products made specifically for this, but the humans were inventing new things all the time and it was impossible to keep up with all of them.)

Aziraphale gasped and arched up as he slid in. Crowley held himself still in that tight velvet heat, his face pressed into Aziraphale’s shoulder, until his hips seemed to move in spite of him, picking up the pace with smooth deep strokes, giving it to him hard and Aziraphale groaned -

“Aziraphale? Did I hurt you?” he asked through gritted teeth, only that sound that might have been pain holding up his self-control.

“No, not at all. Do it again,” Aziraphale ordered.

So he did, listening to all the noises Aziraphale made, feeling the angel’s hands on his arse, pulling him closer, urging him harder, deeper. Maybe it was knowing that eternity could be taken away that made it so urgent, or maybe they were just hopeless hedonists who were extremely sexually compatible. Really ridiculously sexually compatible, in a way that implied intelligent design had been applied by someone with a fine sense of dramatic irony. Making an angel and a demon quite so good in bed together had to be _somebody’s _idea of a joke. An absolutely brilliant joke, as far as Crowley was concerned.

Thinking like that didn’t help Crowley’s stamina, not with Aziraphale encouraging him and making those little noises and whispering that he loved him (he’d caught on right away that during sex was the only time he could get away with that, and exploited it shamelessly. Any day now Crowley was going to say it back and_ then_ he’d be sorry.) He only just held on long enough to give the angel what he’d asked for, to feel him clench around him, watch his face while he came.

“Go on, come inside me now,” Aziraphale panted, sounding sex-drunk.

Crowley never had been able to refuse him anything, and his hips stuttered, chasing the crest of pleasure in one thrust after another, Aziraphale moving with him, until he was there, he was going over and swept away and the angel was keeping him safe and murmuring into his hair as orgasm grabbed him by every nerve ending at once and showed him the human divine.

The cottage (well-appointed family home) garden came equipped with a lovely herbaceous border and nothing so ordinary as a plain wooden bench: instead it offered a comfortable, cushioned wicker sofa. By mid-morning the sun was shining, and when they got out of bed it was only to go outside and sprawl over the garden furniture. At least, Crowley was sprawling: he was stretched out as close to full length as the sofa would allow, while Aziraphale sat up normally. But Crowley had his head in Aziraphale’s lap, and Aziraphale’s hands moved hypnotically through his hair, so if you thought about it that meant they were both implicated in the sprawl really. It was a team effort, like much of their best work had been.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said.

“Mmm?”

“Are you feeling stressed at the moment? Right now, I mean?”

Crowely thought about this. How did he feel? Between the invigorating cold water of the English Channel and the mind-blowing sex, his body was almost tingling. He felt…well-fucked - like ‘taking’ somebody’s virginity, he had come to understand that ‘fucking’ was often something one human did to another rather than a joint activity. But language is in a constant state of flux, and Crowley had the rest of eternity to make sure it fluxed in the direction he wanted, to where he and Aziraphale could mutually fuck each other. If he had known the expression ‘be the change you want to see in the world’, he would have both instinctively mocked it and secretly known that these were words to live by.

He also felt that he was enjoying basking in the sun, but not as much as he enjoyed having his head in Aziraphale’s lap and Aziraphale’s hands stroking his hair; he felt that the world was an excellent place, that humans were very interesting indeed (swimming in the very cold sea! He would never have thought of that by himself!) and that he was glad beyond words that it and they were still here. But he did not feel stressed.

“Can’t say that I am, no. Not stressed at all.”

“Oh, good. Because I wondered if you’d thought about it any further? You know, our earlier conversation about the rest of eternity?”

“Is there a rest of eternity, if it’s eternal? Doesn’t that imply it’s finite, if you can have the rest?”

“Hm. An interesting metaphysical point, but – actually do you mind if we come back to it later? I’ll completely lose my train of thought if I start considering the nature of eternity now. Anyway I was just going to say - we’re here now, aren’t we? On earth, for eternity?”

“Yup.”

“So should we perhaps – get involved?”

“You mean use our supernatural powers to intervene in human affairs even without heaven and hell to tell us what to do?”

“Well, yes.”

“Yeah. Think so.”

“Oh. You decided that rather quickly. Don’t you think we need to start with some kind of… ethical framework? Try to catalogue and assign a moral value to every human act, so we know which ones are good and which ones aren’t?”

“Ugh, Satan no, definitely not!”

“Why ever not?” Aziraphale sounded almost offended so Crowley reached for the hand he had just removed from his shoulder and kissed it.

Aziraphale’s face melted into a soft smile. It was just as well they were on their own side now, because it would have been too easy for an unscrupulous demon to take advantage of his good nature. If Crowley had ever had any kind of work ethic, not a single one of his wiles would have been thwarted.

“Because it’d take too long. The humans are always doing new things, we’d never keep up.”

“We have eternity, Crowley!”

“But the humans don’t. Remember Mr Shao’s wife?”

“Oh, well, but that was different – it was so clear cut! You can’t deport somebody to somewhere they’ve barely lived when their family is all here, it’s utterly inhumane! And it’s so easy to alter paperwork, isn’t it? Nobody ever really questions a decision once it’s in the system…”

Mr Shao ran the restaurant around the corner with the excellent dim sum, although his background was in fact more literary, and he and Aziraphale had taken to discussing the poetry of 18th century China. These conversations were exquisitely boring (to Crowley, at least, and wasn’t his opinion the one that really mattered?), but had created enough intimacy for Mr Shao to mention his wife’s struggles with arcane bureaucratic rituals that went by names like _conditional leave to remain_ and _immigration tribunal_ and _removal centre_ and _forced repatriation_.

It had only taken a very small adjustment to some Home Office paperwork to resolve the matter. Crowley and Aziraphale were both seasoned professionals when it came to getting the result you wanted from your paperwork: Aziraphale had performed the miracle this time, but Crowley would have had no trouble taking it on had circumstances required it. Their skills were eminently transferable after a thousand years of the Arrangement.

“…but yes, I take your point,” Aziraphale concluded. “We may have eternity, but time is quite important to human lives, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.”

“So we just – do things? Decide for ourselves?”

“Better than letting my lot or your lot decide. I mean we’re not _great_, but we’ve got to be better than them, right?”

Aziraphale considered this.

“I suppose neither of us has ever had an idea as bad as Armageddon,” he conceded.

“There you are then. Job done. Decision decided. Uh. Made.”

“Are you sure? That seems awfully fast.”

“Pffff, course it isn’t fast, we’ve been thinking about it for at least two thousand years. Probably longer. Probably since the Garden – d’you remember, when you gave them your sword? That flaming one? You decided for yourself.”

“Yes, I – I suppose I did, didn’t I?”

“You started way before I did, actually - I was still doing what they told me, but you were already making up your own mind about what was right and what was wrong, and doing something about it. I always liked that about you. Direct action.” 

Aziraphale smiled at him again in that melting sort of way. “That’s a much nicer way of putting it than I deserve, but thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And we can start like you did then, with what’s right in front of us, and then scale up – you know, like, um, the bloke who started the company from his garage and now he has so much money he runs the world?”

“Oh, you mean Jeff Bezos?”

Crowley was so surprised he tried to sit up, but Aziraphale’s hand on his chest gently pushed him down again.

“You – you call a bicycle a velocipede but you know about _Amazon?” _he spluttered.

“There are a lot of new things happening, all the time, I have to prioritise!” he said, somewhat defensively. “And I _am_ in the book trade.”

“It’s been called a bicycle for over a century - that’s not new, even for us!”

“You’ve been so kind and driven me everywhere I needed to go, so I suppose they just never really caught my eye.”

There was a city bike hire station within sight of his bookshop, and Crowley told him as much. “There’s a bike hire station within sight of your bookshop!”

But Aziraphale wasn’t going to be distracted with bicycles.

“Chacun est responsable de tous. Chacun est seul responsable. Chacun est seul responsable de tous,” he said, sanctimoniously, which Crowley now correctly identified as angelic teasing.

“I don’t know what you just said, but if you ever speak French to me again, I’ll – I’ll - ” he wracked he brain furiously for a suitable threat. “I’ll let people _buy_ your books, all the books they want! I’ll sell them in _bulk_.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Try me, angel. Just try me.”

And with that the conversation rather got off track, but a decision had at least been made, or perhaps a realisation had been come to. They were in the world, and when you’re in the world sometimes all you can do is use whatever power is at your disposal and accept your responsibility for what you see around you. For other people, be they human or supernatural, and for what you believe is the right thing to do.

And if you can share the work, and the world, with somebody you love – well, then that’s even better, isn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyyyyyy I quoted French at you, don't you want to just *slap* me now? I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't already been in sight of my author's note, but having quoted Philip Larkin and Dylan Thomas where was there left for me to go to up the ante if not into French??? It is Antoine de Saint-Exupery and I couldn't find a published English translation (ironically for a pilot he doesn't travel all that well into English - we're too unphilosophical and emotionally repressed for what he's selling, perhaps?) but roughly speaking it means: "We are each responsible for each other. We are each individually responsible. We are each individually responsible for everyone," which I think are words to live by. 
> 
> And I also thought, although Crowley & Aziraphale have earned a week or two off to stay in bed, get drunk and tell each other they love each other a lot, the world is pretty awful right now and I couldn't bear to think they'd just sit by and ignore all the human suffering around them. Not when they've got all that power and went to so much trouble to save the world. Even if they didn't end up helping all that much, but that isn't THEIR fault is it? They TRIED!
> 
> Anyway, come avoid your day job with me on [tumblr](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/). Time won't just waste itself you know!


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